The role of design in e-book design is often overlooked in projecting a professional image and visually reinforcing each sale. Nevertheless, design and color are two of the most important design tools that authors can use to make their e-books easy-to read and capable for building a compelling personal brand for the author.

The following are some of the lessons I noticed reading Pink & Grow Rich:

Landscape format for easy online reading. Unlike most e-books which are based on 8 1/2 by 11-inch vertical pages, Pink & Grow Rich was formatted using a landscape format. The “wider instead of taller” Acrobat PDF format is easier to read on screen, eliminating the need to scroll when reading each page.

Personalization. A large photograph of the author (shown at above right) as well as those responding to Deepika’s question (shown at right). Similar photographs accompany the responses of the successful female leaders who answered Deepika’s question about the origins of success.

Color’s role in Pink & Grow rich

Color is used with restraint color. The major of the text is set in black against a white background. palette. The pink color visually targets its female market, and creates a visual tie-in to current breast-cancer fund-raising efforts.

Note that the color is not used for text, but, instead, for highlights behind the sidebar text, at left, which summarizes the 6 Common Characteristics of success.

“Unreasonable Lessons”

Perhaps the most successful design technique used to add value to Pink & Grow Rich is the way all of the pages have been based on a multi-column grid.

The primary benefit of multi-column grids is they avoid the problem of long lines extending across the screen.

Immediately above, for example, is one of the pages describing one Deepika’s “11 Unreasonable Questions”

Ccompare the above “Unreasonable Rules” format used in the above example with the other examples shown in this post. Notice how the column width and placement, slightly differ on each page, but each page relates to the other pages. Pink & Grow Riche’s designers have added visual interest to each page without weakening the e-book’s overall professional image.

Takeaway for e-book authors

Pink & Grow Riches’ big idea for authors is that the design of inexpensive e-books don’t have to result in hard-to-read publications that fails to build their authors’ brands. Although Deepika’s e-book costs less than 10 dollars, it projects a First-Class image that makes competing e-books look drab by comparison. What do you think? Share e-book design and layout questions as comments, below.